In Ukraine, ‘nothing except for a great emptiness inside’

You can barely see her in the heart-wrenching photo that made the rounds in the world press. Surrounded by huge slabs of concrete and a bathtub, she sits crouching, her right hand raised to her face, as if she’s stifling a scream. Her name is Anastasia and she’s 23 years old. She’s also one of the lucky survivors of one of Russia’s latest atrocities: the Jan. 14 bombing of a residential building in the city of Dnipro.

One count put the number killed at 45; 75 were injured and 39 were rescued. Anastasia’s parents appear to be missing. In September, Anastasia also lost her boyfriend, Vlad, who was killed in action. At that time, she wrote on Instagram: “I have no words, I have no emotions, I feel nothing except for a great emptiness inside.” One can’t even imagine what she must be feeling now.

But we know what too many Russians apparently are feeling — and it’s not shame or compassion but pride and joy. As Sergei Mardan, a journalist and propagandist, described his response to the bombing, “I won’t hide that I feel good!” Indeed, Mardan enjoined his readers to look at Mariupol, the south Ukrainian city that was almost completely leveled by Russian artillery and missiles: “That’s how Kharkiv will look. And Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv, too.”

Notwithstanding Mardan’s joy, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has failed to break Ukrainians’ spirit and resolve with this latest act of genocide, but he has accomplished two things. He has sent a timely reminder to the West that there is no talking to a genocidaire, that negotiations with a monster are doomed a priori, and that, as former Polish Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld recently said, Russia “will stop where it is stopped.” That means Ukraine must receive — immediately — all the heavy weapons it needs to stop Russia and drive it out of the territories it seized. Nothing less than a Ukrainian victory will end the strategic and human rights nightmare that is Putin’s Russia. There is no alternative. A Russian victory means World War III, and a prolonged stalemate means the death of hundreds of thousands.

Putin has also driven the last nail into the coffin of Ukrainian-Russian amity. For all the last thirty years, Ukrainians have, despite repeated Russian insults and interventions, harbored positive feelings toward Russians. The war changed all that. And if that weren’t enough for some Ukrainians, the Russian genocide — mass rapes, the kidnapping of children, numerous torture chambers, Nazi-style executions, and the wanton destruction of civilians and their homes — settled the matter. The Dnipro atrocity, with its image of a helpless Ukrainian girl huddled amidst debris, will make the chasm between Ukrainians and Russians unbridgeable for decades to come. 

Like the Germans after the Nazi annihilation of Jews, Russians will have to accept responsibility, change their ways, pay reparations, and ask God and Ukrainians for forgiveness before any hope of reconciliation will be kindled.

Until then, Ukrainians attitudes perhaps have been best captured by a female soldier who served in the defense of Mariupol with the code name Little Bird: “Every time you tell me about the great Russian ballet, I’ll tell you the story of the young girl from Brovary who was raped multiple times before her parents and then kidnapped by the Russian brutes, of the tens or maybe even hundreds of Ukrainian women who were raped, oftentimes before their children… 

“Every time you tell me about the great Russian composers, I’ll tell you the story of the little girl who, together with her little brother, watched her mother die in the course of several days in a Mariupol basement….

“Every time you tell me about great Russian painting, I’ll tell you about the innocent Ukrainians who were shot in the back in Makariv region… 

“Every time you tell me about the great Russian theater, I’ll tell you the story of the woman from Brovary region whose metal roofing was taken by Russian looters…

“Every time you tell me about the great Russian cinema, I’ll tell you about the horses that were savagely shot and killed in their stalls in Kyiv province…

“Every time you tell me about the great Russian literature, I’ll tell you about the scores of intercepted phone calls between Russian soldiers and their mothers and wives … in which the wives tell them what they should steal from Ukrainian buildings and their mothers laugh when their little boys tell them how they and their pals raped little khokhol [a pejorative term for Ukrainians] girls…

“There is no great Russian culture, literature, cinema, painting, theater, and ballet anymore. There is a country of monsters, looters, rapists, and killers. Savage people, for whom there is no place in the civilized world!”

Don’t expect Little Bird and the millions of Ukrainians who feel just like her about a country they once admired to give up the fight. As Ukrainians say, they will fight to the end because Russia’s genocidal war leaves them no choice. Accommodating Putin means death. Negotiating with Putin means death. Surrendering to Putin means death. Only fighting offers hope of survival.

Facing such a determined foe, one with nothing to lose, Russia cannot win. It can continue with its genocide but it will not, and cannot, break Ukrainians. The West needs to recognize that, too. It can watch Ukrainians die and lose, or it can help Ukrainians survive and win by doing everything possible to stop Putin’s Russia now.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”